DJ Ashtrae (Joshua Escobar)

BIO

DJ Ashtrae (Joshua Escobar) was the Dean’s Fellow in Writing at the MFA Program at Bard College (Class of 2017). He was a Merit Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley (Class of 2016). Caljforkya Voltage, his first chapbook, was published by No, Dear/Small Anchor Press in 2017. He lives in San Bernardino .

IG: djashtrae17

xUTOPIAx for Hoa Nguyen

And there is warm manufacturing in south New Caljforkya, hills, and
no hills, machinery hot with international demand, and acrylic idleness. Once I
have 9 internets and evil café I might understand death by proxy NOW unpacking
angel hair inheriting loop circular NOW crashing milk and stewed tomatoes NOW
the TV singing “take it to take it” featuring light up Anus 3000s NOW sip broth
NOW I am a boy playing tag at the Mary Lytle Nature Center hiding under the
milkweed bougainvillea something patch. Flecks of sun make it through the
undergrowth and emblazons the bare dirt beyond. Other children run, turn, call,
crouch, utter, hide from the one who is it, or who they think is NOW I sleep in
the mailbox of Saint Anonymous and Wasting. He’s a honey mercurial calavera.
He’s moss in winter. He fought in 2 gueras. He eats rocks and rust and is
blamed for headless snakes. During earthquakes he is dancing. He’s a honey
mercurial calavera NOW I miss the way we obsess over one another. Sun and moon.
We lived in different parts of town, traumatopia and WASP Central. We’d do all
the iceeee you stole from work and I’d make enchiladas. We’d lie naked to
Grimes or A Flock of Seagulls or Cesária Évora. Maybe have sex, maybe just
gossip. We’d scrub each other in the shower stocked with tea tree oils, the
ceramic clean. I wish it was like the night of queer cumbia, you drooling over
me in a sleeveless “Pies and Thighs” tee and long black jeans. I wish we could
wake to the sky hickey’d, oak trees bare, thrashings stirring. I long for old
school block parties, any kind of BBQ, dancehalls with ill beatz or /rupture. I
wish people would embrace others outside of slaughter. I want a future where
every chingona gets a free bicicleta, painted purple.